I like it, but when you make your guess the mystery color should change to the color it describes, not to green or red. You should use some other aspect to indicate success - shape, motion, font, anything other than color. You already have it shaking for an incorrect guess, so that’s good.
Definitely don't make the game end dafter one wrong guess. At least give me some lives or something, damn. Or, better yet, just let me play to the end, then give me my score.
I feel that way. Also there are many cases where I can eliminate two choices as obviously wrong but can’t tell the difference between two similar shades. I wouldn’t feel bad getting disqualified for a gross error but when it is two shades of bluish-green it doesn’t seem fair.
Another possibility is to give it more of a tournament feel where the early cases are easy and the last ones are hard so I get disqualified at 15/20 (webdev and photographer who does gfx programming for fun) but a real goldeneye could go further. 3/20 does not represent my skill.
that's not really what you want, what you want is for the starting of a new game to be automatic and not require extra clicks.
the way I'm suggesting (which is what the game is with extra clicks) is a game of "what's my longest streak of correct guesses" which actually makes your score look better than keeping your losses around.
However, you both ask about colors and use color for confirmation. This unfortunately is both confusing and makes a not nice overlap of one modality used for two things.
Quick solution: just use the correct color. Use other modality (e.g. shape V/X or text "Correct!" vs "Wrong!")
It would be nice if this told you upfront how many questions there were - after sixteen with nothing changing I figured it was probably endless but apparently there are twenty?
I’m so confused. This is something people know? I mean, I can work it out from first principles knowing how color mixing works, but it sounds like people just … know them?
I’ve been programming for almost 40 years and it would never have occurred to me to memorize this sort of thing.
I doubt anyone has many of them truly memorized. It's more like having the ability to quickly see each hex character and understand roughly what percentage that is, then quickly visualize the resulting color. My methodology playing this is to just convert each hex character to high, medium, or low, so you end up with something like "high red, medium blue, low green."
>I mean, I can work it out from first principles knowing how color mixing works
did you try it? if you can work it out from first principles because you know how color mixing works, you should get a perfect score; that's the game. If you don't get a perfect score, you need to reinspect what you think you know about color mixing and even the first principles.
Just know them no. Able to sanity check that an RGB value is the color it's supposed to be yes sometimes. It's not the most useful skill because you almost always get a swatch now, but sometimes being able to have some idea of how it'll look (should it be dark or light, grey or intense color) saves me 10 seconds here and there.
I like playing guess-RGB games every now and then because it improves the skill, but at the same time I find them really stressful haha.
Couldn't get above 3 for numerous tries, after 5 minutes or so managed to get to 18! I learned a lot playing this (and reflected on things I already "knew" but never reflected on why). Thanks!
I tried about 5 times and never got more than 3 right. It would be better if they started out a little easier and then increased the difficulty. Currently it seems random. At any time you might get three nearly identical green boxes and it’s game over.
Off topic, but this seems like a decent place to ask:
Has anyone else noticed the weird new grey color that automobiles have in the last year or so? Does anyone know how to describe that color? Can anyone explain how it is different from previous greys in RGB terms? Or even in paint color terms?
This is hexadecimal notation for rgb. Each character represents 2 bytes, which encode a value from 0 to 255.
This is a bit more confusing because this is a shorthand notation: you’d actually need 2 hexadecimal characters for 2 bytes (eg #0077ff would be rbg(0, 127, 255)). In this shorthand notation, I think there’s an implied 0 (eg #07f is #0070f0).
So you can’t represent all rgb colour with only 3 characters, but for this use-case it’s fine.
In css you can use either of these 3 notations, for example
> The format of an RGB value in hexadecimal notation is a '#' immediately followed by either three or six hexadecimal characters. The three-digit RGB notation (#rgb) is converted into six-digit form (#rrggbb) by replicating digits, not by adding zeros. For example, #fb0 expands to #ffbb00. This makes sure that white (#ffffff) can be specified with the short notation (#fff) and removes any dependencies on the color depth of the display.
I'm quite fond of the 3-digit hexadecmial RGB notation. It's a concise way to express the colours I use for web pages or Emacs font locking. In these cases, I rarely need the full 16-million-colour range offered by 6 digits. The 3 digits are usually more than enough, at least to me.
Every tool I've ever used referred to this as hex (including design tools but maybe I'm sheltered), whereas rgb refers to the 0-255 triples
If someone asked me for a colour in "RGB" they'd be rightly confused if gave them a hex format colour (obviously you can convert between them but that's not what they asked for)
It's a shortened form of hex colors from CSS, but it does correspond to RGB since the first character of the hex value is the R, the second character is the G, and the third is the B. So for instance, a hex value from this game of #F18 means the red is F (out of F), the green is 1 (out of F), and the blue is 8 (out of F).
I like it, but when you make your guess the mystery color should change to the color it describes, not to green or red. You should use some other aspect to indicate success - shape, motion, font, anything other than color. You already have it shaking for an incorrect guess, so that’s good.
Yeah that green tripped me up.
Definitely don't make the game end dafter one wrong guess. At least give me some lives or something, damn. Or, better yet, just let me play to the end, then give me my score.
I feel that way. Also there are many cases where I can eliminate two choices as obviously wrong but can’t tell the difference between two similar shades. I wouldn’t feel bad getting disqualified for a gross error but when it is two shades of bluish-green it doesn’t seem fair.
Another possibility is to give it more of a tournament feel where the early cases are easy and the last ones are hard so I get disqualified at 15/20 (webdev and photographer who does gfx programming for fun) but a real goldeneye could go further. 3/20 does not represent my skill.
that's not really what you want, what you want is for the starting of a new game to be automatic and not require extra clicks.
the way I'm suggesting (which is what the game is with extra clicks) is a game of "what's my longest streak of correct guesses" which actually makes your score look better than keeping your losses around.
Odd, I only got one wrong, and it gave me a 10/20 score at the end. Is the scoring not 1-to-1?
edit: Oh, I see. Once you get one wrong the game ends immediately, but the score includes the full 20 rounds that you're supposed to get through.
Thank you for sharing!
However, you both ask about colors and use color for confirmation. This unfortunately is both confusing and makes a not nice overlap of one modality used for two things.
Quick solution: just use the correct color. Use other modality (e.g. shape V/X or text "Correct!" vs "Wrong!")
It would be nice if this told you upfront how many questions there were - after sixteen with nothing changing I figured it was probably endless but apparently there are twenty?
First try: 16/20
https://imgur.com/a/c0yUOlw
Excellent game!
Good job! That’s really good! Oh damn I didn’t realised it was you!
Dear HN community, susam built the GuessMyRGB game which was a huge inspiration for this game. Please take the time to play it!!
https://susam.net/myrgb.html
That one had a thread last year, for anyone interested:
Guess my RGB - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39882018 - March 2024 (144 comments)
Here is another one my friend shared with me that's interesting. The time constraint adds some excitement! https://color.method.ac/
Interesting that sometimes a washed out color will look darker than a pure color, even though there's more light overall.
I’m so confused. This is something people know? I mean, I can work it out from first principles knowing how color mixing works, but it sounds like people just … know them? I’ve been programming for almost 40 years and it would never have occurred to me to memorize this sort of thing.
I doubt anyone has many of them truly memorized. It's more like having the ability to quickly see each hex character and understand roughly what percentage that is, then quickly visualize the resulting color. My methodology playing this is to just convert each hex character to high, medium, or low, so you end up with something like "high red, medium blue, low green."
>I mean, I can work it out from first principles knowing how color mixing works
did you try it? if you can work it out from first principles because you know how color mixing works, you should get a perfect score; that's the game. If you don't get a perfect score, you need to reinspect what you think you know about color mixing and even the first principles.
Yes, I got a perfect score. It just took me several minutes, whereas coworkers of mine got 15+ in just a few seconds.
Just know them no. Able to sanity check that an RGB value is the color it's supposed to be yes sometimes. It's not the most useful skill because you almost always get a swatch now, but sometimes being able to have some idea of how it'll look (should it be dark or light, grey or intense color) saves me 10 seconds here and there.
I like playing guess-RGB games every now and then because it improves the skill, but at the same time I find them really stressful haha.
I got 14/20 on my first try just by knowing how the color mixing works. A few simple rules:
- Higher values mean brighter colors
- The closer the individual colors are to each other, the closer to "gray" it looks
- R + G = Yellow, R + B = Fuchsia, G + B = Teal
I’d say this is firmly about knowing how colour mixing works, and not about memorising.
4096 colors is not too much to memorize.
In the English language, they call it "red"
In the programming language, we call it "f00"
4096 words for colors!
f00 is 3840
Couldn't get above 3 for numerous tries, after 5 minutes or so managed to get to 18! I learned a lot playing this (and reflected on things I already "knew" but never reflected on why). Thanks!
I tried about 5 times and never got more than 3 right. It would be better if they started out a little easier and then increased the difficulty. Currently it seems random. At any time you might get three nearly identical green boxes and it’s game over.
Very fun game. Got 15/20. I think I'd do better at an HSL version.
Off topic, but this seems like a decent place to ask:
Has anyone else noticed the weird new grey color that automobiles have in the last year or so? Does anyone know how to describe that color? Can anyone explain how it is different from previous greys in RGB terms? Or even in paint color terms?
Make sure to disable any dark mode extensions or the colors will not show up correctly.
18/20, first try :)
You're good. I made 0/20 on my first try.
haha this is such a cool and fun game.
> do you know rgb
> colours are in hex
am I missing something or being dumb?
This is hexadecimal notation for rgb. Each character represents 2 bytes, which encode a value from 0 to 255.
This is a bit more confusing because this is a shorthand notation: you’d actually need 2 hexadecimal characters for 2 bytes (eg #0077ff would be rbg(0, 127, 255)). In this shorthand notation, I think there’s an implied 0 (eg #07f is #0070f0).
So you can’t represent all rgb colour with only 3 characters, but for this use-case it’s fine.
In css you can use either of these 3 notations, for example
The 3-digit shorthand for hexadecimal RGB colours dates back to CSS1, if not earlier.
From <https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1/>:
> The format of an RGB value in hexadecimal notation is a '#' immediately followed by either three or six hexadecimal characters. The three-digit RGB notation (#rgb) is converted into six-digit form (#rrggbb) by replicating digits, not by adding zeros. For example, #fb0 expands to #ffbb00. This makes sure that white (#ffffff) can be specified with the short notation (#fff) and removes any dependencies on the color depth of the display.
I'm quite fond of the 3-digit hexadecmial RGB notation. It's a concise way to express the colours I use for web pages or Emacs font locking. In these cases, I rarely need the full 16-million-colour range offered by 6 digits. The 3 digits are usually more than enough, at least to me.
Every tool I've ever used referred to this as hex (including design tools but maybe I'm sheltered), whereas rgb refers to the 0-255 triples
If someone asked me for a colour in "RGB" they'd be rightly confused if gave them a hex format colour (obviously you can convert between them but that's not what they asked for)
In CSS, #07f is the same as #0077ff. (i.e. double each symbols)
It's a shortened form of hex colors from CSS, but it does correspond to RGB since the first character of the hex value is the R, the second character is the G, and the third is the B. So for instance, a hex value from this game of #F18 means the red is F (out of F), the green is 1 (out of F), and the blue is 8 (out of F).